


how you felt me slip your mind

by the_diplomat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 03:20:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4003900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_diplomat/pseuds/the_diplomat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been twelve minutes, and Pietro will never be older than her again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how you felt me slip your mind

It has been twelve seconds.

She's not screaming anymore. Instead of the chaos of battle or a bone-deep fear not her own, Wanda's mind is filled with a terrible gaping silence. Pietro's mind was the first she ever felt; before Strucker, before STARK on the side of a bomb, before everything. _It must be a twin thing_ , their mother had said, and she had nodded with the solemnity of an innocent.

Now it's gone, the familiar presence at the back of her mind, almost too fast to hold on to. No matter the speed with which his thoughts or his body had moved, though, her brother had never truly left her. Even in the fortress cells, Wanda has never been more or less than half of a greater whole.

It has been twelve seconds, and Wanda is alone for the first time in her life.

\---

It has been twelve minutes.

Twelve minutes in which she has torn the heart from the thing they once stood beside, the thing calling itself Ultron. In which she has been pulled from the carnage by the android Vision. In which she has seen her hometown destroyed. In which her entire world has collapsed and Wanda has gone numb.

In twelve minutes, everything she has fought for has been snatched away, her sacrifices rendered dust and ash in a splinter of the time it took to make them. It was always her brother who kept track of every second, knew precisely when it was and how much longer it would be. But she must take up that duty now, and there is one thing Wanda knows.

It has been twelve minutes, and Pietro will never be older than her again.

\---

It has been twelve hours.

In the chaos of arriving in New York ( _a new continent and a new life, yet she feels nothing_ ), Wanda is separated from her brother. 

She cannot think _her brother's body_ , because she cannot accept that he is dead. If he is dead then she is too, or worse, she lives on alone. Neither is a state she wishes to experience. But she cannot find him, no matter how she searches with her eyes and her thoughts. It drives her frantic, asking every person around her if they have seen him, if they know where her brother has been taken. They have never been fully separated for long in their lives, and now that so little time remains ( _do not think that he will be fine it will be fine_ ) she will not be apart from him. And yet he is nowhere to be found.

It has been twelve hours, and Wanda doesn't know how how to be just one.

\---

It has been twelve days.

She'd been standing in one of the broad common spaces of the great complex, turning some bit of equipment over and over in her hands, when something had flared to life in her head. It had taken a moment; at first, Wanda had thought a new agent or one of the sea of scientists in the building had drawn near enough to feel. And then she knew.

The machine had smashed on the floor.

Now Wanda is holding her brother as closely as she can, crushed into the narrow clinic bed with him even though it's far too small to fit them both. He's still not fully recovered, dazed by cheating death, but she doesn't care. Pietro's heart is beating under her cheek and it feels like she is breathing for the first time since her world fell from the sky.

Doctor Cho is saying something about the machine and GH.325 and Pietro's abilities but all Wanda hears is _he is alive. You are alive._

It has been twelve days, and _me_ and _you_ become _us_ again.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my sister, who wanted a fix-it fic.
> 
> Title is from "The Wolf" by Mumford and Sons, which I listened to rather a lot while writing this.


End file.
